I just happened to catch a news segment on Channel 10 that confirmed one of my longtime suspicions: Israeli opinion polls need to be taken with plenty of salt.
The producers of the show used some student-aged youngsters undercover reporters. The young lads/lassies applied to the various polling institutes for temp jobs as phone interviewers.
Some of the most veteran institutes in the field (quoted all the time by the press) hire their personnel without even the most perfunctory check. Video/audio segments from a concealed camera revealed that most of the "personnel" fill out forms themselves if the interviewee does not answer or tells them to take a hike, and fill in missing answers if the callee hangs up halfway through.
At another institute, much more professional procedures are in place, such as random eavesdropping on calls by supervisors, online forms to reduce data entry mistakes, and the like. However, their polls get published several days later than the others, and their main customer (Israel's largest web portal) routinely publishes polls from several days ago as if they were taken on the day of publication.
The firm retained by Channel 10 themselves did not hire the undercover reporter who offered his services, and thus no data were available on them.
Bottom line: don't believe everything you read in Israeli polls.
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